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Laureates

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The National Network of Youth and Children Orchestras of Venezuela

Prince of Asturias Award for the Arts
2008

The National Network of Youth and Children Orchestras of Venezuela (its Spanish acronym, FESNOJIV) is currently composed of 120 youth orchestras and 60 children’s orchestras. It came into being in 1975 in order to allow students of music to put their theoretical knowledge into practice.

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The project was launched internationally in 1995 with the performance of the National Youth Symphony Orchestra at the Kennedy Center in Washington (USA). The orchestra’s exceptional artistic quality has taken it around the world, having performed in the United Nations Headquarters in New York and for Pope John Paul II. It has been led by some of the most prestigious conductors, such as Claudio Abbado, Zubin Mehta, Sir Simon Rattle (from Berlin’s Philharmonic), Gustavo Dudamel, the current director of The Gothenburg Symphony Orchestra (Sweden), who received his musical training within this system, and Maestro Eduardo Mata. These young students have had the opportunity to perform alongside figures of great stature such as Plácido Domingo, Mstislav Rostropovich, Alicia de Larrocha, Montserrat Caballé and Vladimir Spivakov, among many others.

The organisation also provides workshops for children and young students where they learn to make and repair instruments and special programmes for children with disabilities or with learning difficulties, such as the “White Hands Choir”, consisting of deaf children. The FESNOJIV (National Network of Youth and Children Orchestras of Venezuela) provides technical and managerial assistance to all state schools that request to be integrated into the music-education programme and works together with neighbourhood associations, parents associations, city councils and institutional representatives to provide rehearsal rooms or necessary musical instruments.

Born in Valera (State of Trujillo, Venezuela) in 1939, José Antonio Abreu received his musical training at the “José Ángel Lamas” Advanced Music School in Caracas. In 1975, he became designate conductor of the Simón Bolívar Symphony Orchestra. He then founded the National Network of Youth and Children Orchestras of Venezuela and formed an orchestra with young musicians from different parts of the country which was to make made its debut that same year. José Antonio Abreu’s work has been recognised with numerous international awards. The FESNOJIV received the UNESCO International Music Prize in 1993 and in 1998 Abreu was appointed as Special Ambassador for Peace and Music and the children in the orchestra system were appointed as Artists for Peace. Abreua was also named special representative for the development of a network of orchestras within the framework of UNESCO’s World Movement of Youth and Children’s Orchestras and Choirs, which has the aim of promoting and developing the Venezuelan model throughout the world. Holder of honorary doctorates from the Music Conservatory in New England (Boston, 2002), the Universidad Católica Andrés Bello and the Universidad Nacional Experimental Francisco de Miranda, both in Venezuela, in 2007 Maestro Abreu was conferred with the Don Juan de Borbón Award for Music in its second edition.